Real Virtuality: Meshworks and Hierarchies in the Digital Domain by Manuel de Landa

With the development of the Internet, a way of thinking once reserved for philosophical and scientific study has become applicable to our daily lives–Real Virtuality considers the self-organizing capacity of matter and its potential applications. Just as cooling fluids form into geometrically shaped ice crystals, other things that appear to be inert may be able to organize and shape themselves. And as distant computers have congealed into the Internet, it’s become clearer that self-organization enters wherever processes can find an organizational structure. How can we can activate and utilize these processes? How they can be controlled? How do they control us? In Real Virtuality Manuel DeLanda, of the Columbia University School of Architecture, introduces this exciting way of thinking and opens up its development and application. This guidebook to a novel form of interrelationship will be indispensable for students, designers, developers and anyone with their eye on the zeitgeist.